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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale Baker who wrote (6416)	12/9/2005 8:53:40 AM
From: Mary Cluney	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542254

It's more than just pandering, it's a question of principle. She has compromised her support for free speech to pander to a certain constituency. Once you go down that slope, it gets really slippery. Look, burning a cross on someone's front yard is against the law. People in that house should be afraid. Similarly, burning a flag in someone's front yard would also send some kind of frightening message. The line has to be drawn somewhere. Unfettered free speech also does not work. Where we draw that line is debatable. Hillary is trying to get elected to national office. She is not campaigning to go to the SC. She is not going into a convent. She is not campaigning to be chair of the philosophy department in Cambridge. Being Chief Executive whether in a company or country require different skill sets. Unless you are completely ruthless, you can only do your job if you know when to compromise. By definition, the job she seeks require the ability to compromise. In a democracy, we have to be able to distinguish between those that must compromise versus those that compromise but who are complete jerks. In Hillary's case, a large part of the national constituency are veterans. They are large in number and they are influential. You can't completely write them off. You have to compromise. Giving them the flag does not mean you are going to give in on matters that have far more real consequences.

To: Dale Baker who wrote (6416)	12/9/2005 8:56:24 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542254

It's more than just pandering, it's a question of principle. I've been thinking more about why this small incident has engaged me so much and I've realized that it's more than the pandering for me, too. As Hillary began to come across as more centrist, she became more attractive to me as a candidate. When I read commentary about Hillary from the other side, though, they say that she's way left but is positioning herself as a centrist for the election and that it's all fake. My reaction to her more centrist stance was that she had likely matured so her positions had changed. Either explanation was plausible. But when she came up with this support of criminalizing flag burning, I couldn't find a way to rationalize that as a sincere change of position, which means that maybe it's all fake after all and I don't really know where she stands on anything. That's why, unlike John, I don't find it trivial. And why I asked him and others who may know her better than I whether they think she could possibly be sincere about this free speech issue.

To: Dale Baker who wrote (6416)	12/9/2005 9:10:04 AM
From: JohnM	Respond to of 542254

It's more than just pandering, it's a question of principle. She has compromised her support for free speech to pander to a certain constituency. Once you go down that slope, it gets really slippery. I'm waiting to hear explanations. At the moment, I read it as bad political strategy rather than political substance. And small potatoes at that. As for pandering to a certain constituency, isn't that a universal. You simply vote for the politician who panders to your preferred constituency. Given the human and monetary costs of getting elected these days.